Re: Private note - Re: Access to software versions: a rant

[Stuart Burnfield <slb -at- westnet -dot- com -dot- au>]

Hi Peter -

There's a general class of bad managers for whom revealing a problem == 
a problem and concealing a problem == no problem, and it's logical that 
some of these managers would be QA managers. It seems to me, though, 
that they must have a distorted idea of what their job is about.

If you think of the development process as taking place behind a wall, 
you want to catch as many bugs as possible inside the wall, even though 
you know there'll be a few that get through despite your best efforts. 
It sounds like this head of QA thinks the wall is not at the point where 
the product is released outside the company to customers, but at the 
point where it gets out of QA!

Maybe this company has wrongheaded incentives that actually punish some 
staff when a bug is revealed "too late".


I reckon I could do a pretty good 3-minute spiel to management covering 
types of bugs, types of testing, the increasing cost of fixing bugs at 
various stages during design and development and after release, and so 
on. As I said before, I'd just be surprised to have to deliver it to a 
boss of QA. It would certainly set off some alarm bells for me.

Cheers

Stuart


neilson -at- windstream -dot- net wrote:
 > There is the remote possibility that the QA manager "owns" the
 > territory in which people find and report bugs, and does not want
 > outsiders (tech writers, marketing folks, customers) encroaching
 > on the sacred turf. There is a bit of justification for this view--
 > it allows QA to decree that testing is complete and that the product
 > can be shipped without fear that some dad-blamed tech writer will
 > discover a blocking bug that'll have to be explained away.
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